The Fading Conservative Brand

I had a somewhat strange experience last night. The phone rang, and it was a pollster from LSU. She was calling for a survey they were doing about state political issues, mostly, but she also gathered demographic data for context. I normally don’t participate in polls, but because this was about state issues, I figured that my opinion might carry more weight, however minuscule.

When we got toward the end of the survey, she asked me if I was a Republican, Democrat, or Independent.

“Independent,” I said. That’s how I registered to vote here, and that’s how I think of myself.

This tripped me up. Normally I would say “conservative.” But I thought about how this poll would be read when it came out in the paper. I know what I think about my own philosophical views, and where that puts me on the spectrum, but this was an opinion poll. The real question is where would I fit in among the commonly understood sense of “conservative” in 2013 America?

I asked her to repeat the question, to give me a moment to think about it.

I thought about Rep. Jeff Fortenberry, the strong Catholic social conservative, and how he’s been denounced by that DeMint conservative SuperPAC as “too liberal.” It made me think about how so often these days, whenever I hear the word “conservative” — a word that I use to describe myself — used in the media, and in public debate, I’ve started to associate it not with principled, commonsense, trustworthy governance, but with obstinate, reckless, closed-minded assholery.

This has nothing to do with the standard conservative positions on abortion or gay rights. I hold those views. Though I am not as hardline on right-of-center economics and foreign policy issues as most Republicans, and I believe the GOP ought to open itself to greater diversity in its ranks (even if that means legitimizing social liberals within the party), my feeling here has less to do than you might think with any particular position mainstream conservatives hold. Rather, it’s at least equally the manner in which they hold these positions.

When I was in college, and first became a conservative, it was the liberals who had a reputation as rigid, doctrinaire, snide, and off-putting. I’m generalizing, but in those days, liberals were the ones who were far more likely to be brittle, who weren’t willing to look around and adjust their prescriptions to changing circumstances, who seemed disconnected from the world as it was. It seemed to me that liberals had emotional and ideological touchstones in a bygone political and cultural era, and they dealt with changing times by insisting on greater ideological purity in the ranks. Whatever else 1980s liberalism wasn’t, it wasn’t attractive. It seemed outdated and exhausted, both in terms of substantive policies and in terms of the way it presented itself to the public. I began my college career as a liberal, and it slowly began to dawn on me that I didn’t really believe in liberalism so much as I couldn’t stand Reagan and the people who loved him. I spent my freshman year fuming over the fact that my dad and all his friends were Reagan Democrats living in false consciousness; it never once occurred to me to wonder why it was working-class men had ceased to identify with the Democratic Party, and whether or not liberalism had anything wrong with it. My side was losing, but we found it easier to blame the fools who voted for Reagan, or to blame Reagan for being such an accomplished liar, than to examine ourselves and our own beliefs. (When I did begin to do that, my liberalism, which was primarily attitudinal, faded away.)

This is pretty much the case with conservatism today, I’m afraid. We could argue, and should argue, over what the policies of conservative government should be today; that’s not my point in this blog entry. My point here is that there is no creative ferment on the Right, no breathing space, few places where new ideas can emerge. All the energy on the Right seems aimed at hunting down the heretics within. That, and making life as hard as possible for the opposition, not because they have something better in mind, but as an end in itself.

Here it is, in 2013, with a Democratic president in his second term, and the Republican Party still has not dealt openly with the failures of the Bush presidency, and what it means for conservatism as a governing philosophy. Daniel Larison speaks to this problem well here. Excerpt:

My guess is that Rubio doesn’t think he is taking the country back to the Bush era. As he sees it, he is advocating for standard-issue Republican hawkish foreign policy, and to the extent that he has Bush’s record in mind at all he probably thinks that it was on balance a good record. That is the real problem: these Republicans don’t accept that their foreign policy has already been tried and failed, and if you tell them that they are adherents of Bushism they will probably take it as a compliment. I submit that Rubio hasn’t figured out a way to “move beyond” the Bush era because he thinks it is unnecessary or because he doesn’t want to do it. Failing to do so certainly hasn’t done him any harm among party leaders, since they aren’t interested in separating themselves from Bush-era foreign policy, either.

What do conservative Republicans stand for today that is all that different for what they stood for 30 years ago? This is a point Michael Gerson and Pete Wehner make in their Commentary essay offering ideas for Republican Party reform, and making the case that it is urgently needed. Excerpt:

And it is no wonder that Republican policies can seem stale; they are very nearly identical to those offered up by the party more than 30 years ago. For Republicans to design an agenda that applies to the conditions of 1980 is as if Ronald Reagan designed his agenda for conditions that existed in the Truman years.

To be clear: Reasonable tax rates and sound monetary policy remain important economic commitments. But America now confronts a series of challenges that have to do with globalization, stagnant wages, the loss of blue-collar jobs, exploding health-care and college costs, and the collapse of the culture of marriage.

In addition, on a number of these issues the Republican Party has developed a reputation—mostly but not completely unfair—as judgmental and retrograde.

Republicans think this is standing on strong principle, and giving liberals hell, but it strikes me as something else. Yes, this is about policies, but it’s also about an attitude, a psychology, an approach to politics and political thought. Oddly, perhaps, I am reminded of something the late Orthodox theologian Father Alexander Schememann wrote in his journal, published after his 1983 death, complaining about the suffocating atmosphere within Orthodox Christianity:

To change the atmosphere of Orthodoxy, one has to learn to look at oneself in perspective, to repent, and if needed, to accept change, conversion. In historic Orthodoxy, there is a total absence of criteria for self-criticism. Orthodoxy defined itself: against heresies, against the West, the East, the Turks, etc. Orthodoxy became woven with complexes of self-affirmation, an exaggerated triumphalism: To acknowledge errors is to destroy the foundations of true faith.

A lot of this applies to the psychology of contemporary political conservatism. There is in it so much anger, so much defensiveness, and “a total absence of criteria for self-criticism.” After a while, you just don’t want much to do with it. In the Eighties, and even into the Nineties, conservatism was the future. It sure felt that way. Now, I can’t say liberalism feels like the future the way conservatism did back then — maybe I’m just older now, and can’t be that optimistic about politics of any sort — but the conservatism we have on offer today absolutely feels like a dead end.

I know, I know, none of this griping is new. More than a few of us on the Right have been saying things like this for some time, though the critique remains an outsider one. Eventually it will break through; defeat upon defeat has a way of bringing the most thick-skulled ideologues to their senses. But what will the country have to go through until then?

One of this blog’s readers said in the Fortenberry comments thread that he would like to have the opportunity to vote for a conservative like Fortenberry, but various forces in the GOP and conservative movement aren’t letting him. I know that feeling. It’s the Schememann thing: to allow somebody who applies conservative principles differently to rise within conservative politics is to admit implicitly that there is no conservative orthodoxy, and, in turn, to undermine the foundations of the true faith.

I didn’t think about all this when I was on the phone with the pollster last night. I had a gut check, though, and realized that even though I’m a middle-aged, churchgoing white right-winger who has not the slightest attraction to liberalism, I increasingly don’t want to be associated with what “conservative” means here and now. I told the pollster “somewhat conservative,” only because I don’t want to encourage the party or the movement in what they have become. I don’t want to encourage their doctrinal rigidity, and I sure don’t want to encourage their obstreperousness.

Last night was not the first time I’ve had negative thoughts about the contemporary conservative movement and the GOP, heaven knows. But because I couldn’t qualify or contextualize my answer to the pollster, it was the first time that I can remember that I publicly distanced myself, however mildly, from “conservative” as a brand name. Maybe it was nothing, but it didn’t feel like nothing.

(I’m sure this will go into my RINO file somewhere, but really, at this point, who cares?)

83 Responses to The Fading Conservative Brand

You see, the Obama campaign was completely collapsing in on itself and Romney was surging to a degree that no-one in the liberal biased Lame-stream Manhattan-Beltway media elite could see. But Hugh knew.

Yes indeedy.

For extra fun, go read the National Review crystal-ball prognostication Hugh links to. Pundit after pundit (with one or two exceptions) predicting a huge surprise for that pesky Nate Silver.

You mention Fortenberry and yet which Republican/conservative has the “buzz” about him? Why its physician fellow Ben Carson from John Hopkins because of what he said at the recent Nation Prayer Breakfast. Not so much for what he said, which wasn’t new, but how he said it, who in the room when he said it (Obama) and I suppose being black doesn’t hurt either (Is WSJ dumping Rubio already?). But again it just goes to show that being self-introspective is not a conservative strong point. Even during the 1980s there were many liberals like Gary Hart and others who knew liberalism was intellectually bankrupt and had been replaced by posturing, not ideas. Unfortunately the big difference from back then to today is there are very few if hardly any prominent conservatives, especially elected office holders, who feel the same way. That’s why talk about communication so much, because it’s a lot easier to put lipstick on a pig than to say the pig is just naturally ugly.

I think there’s been a substantial change. A ton of so-called liberalism these days is dominated by pragmatic wonkery, by incrementalism, and there’s largely been an admission that past faith in government programs didn’t work (welfare reform and Clinton’s era of big gov’t is dead) and a buying into what economists claim will work (i.e., free trade).

There are problems with this too, but it’s a change.

Oddly enough, one of the appeals of the right, IMO, in the past was that it could be quite wonky (I’d put the Douthat/Salam arguments in this camp). Now, those kinds of approaches seem to have been kicked to the curb in favor of rather content-free trumpeting of rhetorical points that are to allow for no compromise.

The supposed debate over entitlement reform is one example of this. I would agree that we need to deal with the cost of Medicare, but the Republicans don’t have any real plan for doing so, because they want to talk about spending and how bad it is without dealing with the political cost from actually cutting anything that people like. If you talk in generalities people think you mean benefits that others (less deserving) get, so like it, but the actual cuts not so much.

“The ones out front deploying this McCarthyite smear are – in the cases of, say, Andy McCarthy and Frank Gaffney – among the very people who once bragged about “creating reality”. In the end, reality in Iraq and Afghanistan destroyed their ideas. But since they cannot confront such an intellectual dilemma, they simply continue to create reality. Fox did it right up to election night. But in the end, as any actual conservative knows, reality always wins. And it’s usually a surprise.”

I have taken some online polls and much to my surprise, I come out very conservative on every poll, which given my views is a bit surprising.

But the only way to determine where I stand as to being a conservative rests on a definition of of the concept. After creating a general list of ideas and concepts: I am a conservative and likely to remain so.

I think the Republican party has reached a tipping point which makes an implosion inevitable. There certainly are Republicans who disagree with Democrats but realize they aren’t Marxists. They realize that Obama doesn’t hate America and they realize that policies like charging a women who has an abortion for murder and a enacting a gestapo style deportation of 15 million illegals isn’t happening. The problem is talk radio and fox news has radicalized enough Republicans where they are too many in number to ostracize (as the Dems did to their radicals).

In other words crazy has reached escape volocity in the Republican party and all it’s gonna take is a Hilary Clinton going up against a true talk radio conservative for the center-right reasonables to abandon the party and for the Republican coalition to fracture.

“Rod you say ‘Politics and religion are very different things.’ This is a question I’ve had for decades, what exactly is the difference? It’s never been entirely clear to me. I think that a defensible view of history shows religion to have been quite significant politically speaking and often a determining factor in matters political. The lessening of religious influence is a characteristic of modern politics that is noteworthy for the fact that this is not how it was historically.”

For starters:
1) Politics is about succeeding in this world, religion is about gaining blessedness in the next.
2) Politics is about pleasing voters who are sometimes wrong and sometimes right, religion is about pleasing God who is always right.
3) Politics deals with laws and behaviors which do not touch the heart, religion deals with conversion of the heart and is only secondarily manifested in laws and behaviors.
4) In politics we are all searching in a dark and foggy world for the least bad solution, while in religion we have received a revelation of the truth from God.

As for this administration: I don’t see much in the way of pragmatic legislation. If anything there are in line with policies which were decidely not conservative in nature. We have created an entirely new set of power tools for liberals in essence giving a stamp of approval for liberal policy. We groomed the the country for policies we generally abhor.

A little late: What was the intended goal of this article? Is there a specific response as what it means to be conservative? I was going to submit my parameters at the outset, but held on to them l’est I miss the point of your article.

This is a quote from the article by Pete Wehner and Michael Gerson that was taken from the late conservative columnist Willilam Safire after Nixon’s landslide win over George McGovern in the 1972 presidential election: ” ‘Nothing is more certain in politics,” wrote William Safire in the wake of this Democratic fiasco, “than the crushing defeat of a faction that holds ideological purity to be of greater value than compromise.’ ”

The same thing of course could be said today about the Republican Party. New York Times columnist David Brooks said that Obama’s re-election meant that the McGovernite coalition was finally victorious, meaning that Obama and the diverse base that re-elected him were the political heirs to George McGovern. I totally agree with him. And in the same way, the modern Republican Party has become the political heir to Barry Goldwater. It’s ironic, even bizarre, that the two main American political parties have practically adopted the political platforms of two past presidential nominees who were each defeated in a massive landslide. This just goes to show you how polarized the American political system has become. It also shows how far we have traveled from the relatively moderate bipartisan political consensus that the United States had for several decades after World War II.

This is another important passage from Wehner and Gerson’s article: “Republicans need to express and demonstrate a commitment to the common good, a powerful and deeply conservative concept. There is an impression—exaggerated but not wholly without merit—that the GOP is hyper-individualistic. During the Republican convention, for example, we repeatedly heard about the virtues of individual liberty but almost nothing about the importance of community or social solidarity, and of the obligations and attachments we have to each other. Even Republican figures who espouse relatively moderate policy prescriptions often sound like libertarians run amok.”

The hyper-individualism of the modern Republican Party combined with the notion, real and perceived, that the Republican Party is the party of the rich and big corporations is the party’s biggest problem besides its intransigence. People will get the impression that the Republican Party only cares about the individual economic rights of those “who built it” and not an iota about the individual economic rights of the “moocher 47%.”

This article has so many great points; thoughts that have been in the back of my brain, but which I have never articulated into words. I have been a PJB Conservative for half my 41 year old life. But, at this point, is there any point in holding on to the label? I don’t claim to know all of the political history. But I am guessing that the modern Conservative was a response to the world being turned upside down in the 60’s. Seems like Conservatives wanted to go back to the 50’s. I’ve talked to people that were alive in the 50’s, and they said it really was a great time (if you were white, anyway). So I can understand why people wanted to turn this ship around. And people like PJB did put up a good fight. Well, now here we are in 2013, and I think we lost. Look around you – aren’t most of the things that Conservatives desired in American gone with the wind? Besides, the Conservative label has been opportunistically exploited so that it has lost much of its meaning and lustre. At this point, thinking people should honestly assess where we as Americans are, where we are going, and build on the parts of the old Conservative agenda worth saving, into a new, as yet unamed, movement. You can still keep the URL of this website though, if you like, for old time’s sake.

Glaivester wrote: “The point isn’t that they need to repudiate Bush II, the point is that they shouldn’t be trying to emulate him. If they don’t want to come out and say “Iraq was a mistake,” that’s not a problem; if they come out and say “we need a dozen more Iraqs,” that is.”

No serious Republican is saying that we should have one more Iraq, much less a dozen more Iraqs.

(I’m sure this will go into my RINO file somewhere, but really, at this point, who cares?)

The RINO tag is very weird because it makes Republican more conservative than conservative. In the grassroots right, it’s not unusual these days for Karl Rove, John Boehner and George W. Bush to be bizarrely referred to as RINOs. These activists don’t like Republican policies so they disown the creators of Republican policy for the past dozen years…but they still love the label Republican.

The late 80s/early 90s were really the high water mark of conservative thinking. And I don’t mean it in terms of “being conservative”, I mean it in terms of conservatives were the ones with really interesting ideas. It was an era where a liberal with intellectual energy was going to be arguing in favor of free trade to jump start the domestic job market and alleviate world poverty while creating market-based schemes for trading pollution credits to help the environment and advocating lower capital gains taxes to encourage investment in startups.

But over the years, it became clear that conservatives don’t like conservative ideas as much as they hate liberals and love money and social esteem in the hierarchy. So when liberals are ascendant, they are predictably pissed off and lashing out and anyone not sufficiently loyal to the club and coming to the defense of money and “conservatives on top” social thinking.

“High Tories prefer the values of the historical landed gentry and aristocracy

Sounds nice in theory, but given that the landed gentry and aristocracy was hardly anyone (and my own family is basically small farmers and, on the upper end, petite bourgeoisie), I have to look out for my own good, which does not involve a society that revolves around the veneration of a non-laboring landed gentry.

I think Noah172 unintentionally hits on one of the problems of Conservatives and Republicans as a brand:

Blaming those “others” for problems that “true Americans” would have never caused. The “stuffing Hispanics” comment is such the antithesis of useful thought to your political cause. I hear the idea floating around C and R circles is to reach out to Latino voters but you’re going to have to not only keep comments like that out of your consciousness but also stop genuinely believing that “others” are the problem.

The housing crisis was caused by everyone with dreams of making fast money doing nothing lining up to the trough. To single out Hispanics is not only factually incorrect on the basis of % mortgages originated that failed according to race, it’s also insulting.

It might have tripped me up, too, not thinking very well on my feet. But a conversation with another human being (as contrasted with an automated poll where one must
select one of several mutually exclusive “radio button” choices on a web page) gives an opportunity to respond to the liberal-or-conservative question by saying “yes both” and steadfastly refusing to choose one word over the other. It’s a false dichotomy.

As to “liberal,” it’s simple: reflecting its Latin prototype, it means “of freedom, of a free man, noble, generous”. What more should one need? Even in Webster’s, the definition goes on and on, and entire books have been written describing liberalism as a political philosophy. But freedom has generally been in short supply in human history and needs to be jealously guarded. I am liberal because I value my own liberty and that of others. When policies of so-called liberals actually abridge freedom unnecessarily or unfairly, they don’t deserve the word and I want to point it out. But anyone who flat-out denies being liberal deserves mistrust as well. As far as I am concerned, they have implied that they me begrudge me my freedoms (having already dragged their feet every step of the way) and will take any opportunity they get to abolish them.

But I’m notorious for frugality and wish to be thankful for and to conserve whatever is good, be it material, political, intellectual, or cultural. And there’s a lot– more of the last two than any of us can appreciate in a single lifetime. Many so-called conservatives care nothing about keeping any of these around for posterity. They don’t deserve the word and I want to point it out. Actually, I think that nowadays one must be truly conservative in order to be truly liberal and vice versa. Morris Berman, the late Jacques Barzun, and Garrison Keillor, so different in some ways, all know this; and it is wonderful to find more here.

Nice article. I agree that the right has become more closed minded, less tolerant of dissent (or at least seems to be based on internet commentators and the behavior of conservative establishment groups).

In contemporary America people who are conservative generally consider themselves principled (as opposed to liberals who see themselves as being for ‘what works’). My theory is that in the collective mind of the conservative movement ‘policies’ have been substituted for ‘principles’ so anyone who has a substantial disagreement on a policy is seen to be somehow unprincipled.

Also, lets face it the right does not have the same tools the left has in terms of keeping people in line (like accusations of racism) so loud moralistic posing by people with supposed authority within the ‘movement’ has to substitute for more implicit strategies.

Yes, this is becoming a familiar line among thoughtful conservatives, so what to do? My prescription: let’s spend some of our energy reserved for civilized discourse and channel it toward loudly dismantling, mocking and trivializing the positions of red meat conservatives.

This sounds either facetious or mean, but I am quite earnest. And I am earnest because I am also quite angry that spinmeisters lead an army of ill-informed buffoons under the banner “conservatism,” a banner I used to consider respectable, practical and intellectually supple. I’m not calling for ad hominem attacks, but undermining and tainting some of the ideas in the conservative tent will, like a cancer treatment, end in long term vitality at the expense of short-term vitiation.

For instance: Benghazi. Conservatives keep riding this hobby horse, but as someone who knows a little about foreign policy, I can confidently declare that they look like idiots. Yes, that was a serious failing, but stop acting like it even approaches the malfeasance of, for example, Iran-Contra. And even Iran-Contra affected US foreign policy and American legitimacy not one whit in the long run. Furthermore, it was the Bush administration that demanded more of the State Department and moved to expand the number of consulates into many smaller, friendlier units. It is also many Republicans who consistently refuse to expand funding for State. Yes, “Benghazi” is shorthand for “Obama is ruining American foreign policy and national security,” but that’s my point: it DOESN’T represent that. It’s a minor, if offensive and tragic, foul up. If you’re going to speak for conservatives, stop wearing your ignorance on your sleeve.

All right, I’m drifting into rant territory, but I believe this basic point is valid and necessary: let’s start to humiliate and trash bad conservative thinking where there is still a conservative movement to protect.

If Obamacare is just the Heritage Foundation’s plan like ever gotcha-playin liberal on this site claims. Then what exactly are the liberals new ideas since 1980s. From what I can tell it is

a) concede the republicans were right on fair trade
b) let gays get “married”
c) agree with the republicans on invading Iraq and then jump ship when the going got tough
d) not learn the lessons of the Reagan amnesty

Fell free to add any aditionall ones you can think of. TAC and Rod really need to be honest. If the Republcian party isn’t your default party then you aren’t be non-partisan, or open minded by being harder on Republians. You are catering to your audience. Too often TAC reacts to criticisms of TAC’s failure to ever criticize democrats the way they criticize Republicans by saying of course we focus on Republicans we are a conservative site we wouldn’t be able to persuade democrats. But then you look a your comments and all liberal readers and think well maybe you could at least try and persuade them.

“1) Politics is about succeeding in this world, religion is about gaining blessedness in the next.
2) Politics is about pleasing voters who are sometimes wrong and sometimes right, religion is about pleasing God who is always right.
3) Politics deals with laws and behaviors which do not touch the heart, religion deals with conversion of the heart and is only secondarily manifested in laws and behaviors.
4) In politics we are all searching in a dark and foggy world for the least bad solution, while in religion we have received a revelation of the truth from God.”

For the first item, I point to the god-kings of the past. Granted, none exist now, but I think that the leaders of North Korea are treated as something akin to gods. I stand to be corrected on that point.

For the second item, what you say is true in democratic politics. However, not all politics is democratic. Furthermore, even in democratic politics religion seems to play a significant role. Ever heard of a vocal atheist successfully run for office? Me neither. In fact, in some places, they are not eligible to run for office. I suppose I could point you back to point #1 or to the Iranian theocracy, but that would be a bit redundant.

On the third item, “religion deals with conversion of the heart and is only secondarily manifested in laws and behaviors,” the experience of politics as actually experienced does not bear this out. If this were so, the debate on gay marriage would be rather different. As well, the history of the Roman Catholic Church would be rather different. The 30 Years War probably would not have been. Nor would have the Crusades. And so on…

On your fourth point, I simply note that there a multitude of religions, many of which are claiming to be the truth as revealed by some god or another (see here for a list of the gods: http://www.graveyardofthegods.org/deadgods/listofgods.html ). To a certain extent, this has a certain resemblance to people searching around in the dark for something. I don’t think its a solution per se, but it is definitely something that they are looking for, and there does seem to be shrouded by a lack of clarity.

I find your points attractive, but inadequate for the task to which they are put. Got anything else?

“But anyone who flat-out denies being liberal deserves mistrust as well. As far as I am concerned, they have implied that they me begrudge me my freedoms (having already dragged their feet every step of the way) and will take any opportunity they get to abolish them. ”

This might be why blacks are somewhat to extremely gun shy on conservatives. Especially southern ones. I know that this very thought has crossed my mind more than a few times. Generally, it has been wrong, but from time to time, it has borne fruit.

Gun shy on southern Republicans but certainly not gun shy on moving South. It is curious that you can basically track the migratory patterns of blacks on the basis of which stares are governed by republicans. The solid south stops voting democrat and all of a sudden blacks start moving back.

Blaming those “others” for problems that “true Americans” would have never caused. The “stuffing Hispanics” comment is such the antithesis of useful thought to your political cause…. The housing crisis was caused by everyone with dreams of making fast money doing nothing lining up to the trough. To single out Hispanics is not only factually incorrect on the basis of % mortgages originated that failed according to race, it’s also insulting.

Did you notice the context in which I stated the words that you quote? I was condemning the failures of the Bush administration. Bush, Cheney, Rove, and their minions were overwhelmingly white, and hardly any were of foreign birth.

You are missing the point about my mentioning of the housing bubble: Hispanics did not create the policies which contributed to the housing crisis; rather, they took advantage of policies crafted expressly for their benefit by white political leaders (of both parties, though I did single out the Bush administration) seeking their political support. Really, Bush and Rove were explicit that “lowering the barriers to home ownership” (translation: debauching credit standards) would bring poor Hispanics specifically into the homeowning middle class, and thus transform them magically into Republicans. (Side-note: Bush and Rove seem not to have noticed that black homeowners were not appreciably more supportive of the Republican Party than black renters.) Go read Steve Sailer’s extensive reporting on the intersection of ethnic politicking and the housing crisis: he explains it better than I can here.

The solid south stops voting democrat and all of a sudden blacks start moving back.

The Old Democrat state governments were kept in office by black and white Southerners who considered the threat of group racial violence a realistic possibility- in fact the primary danger, and much more likely to occur with Republicans in control.

When racial group violence stopped being perceived as a realistic possibility in their state, moderate white Southerners would stop providing the votes to Old Democrats that kept them in office. It’s somewhat more complicated than that, there being an economic rationale also involved, but not much.

So yes, Republican state governments and black inmigration in the South are both linked to perceptions of qualitatively improved race relations.

If Obamacare is just the Heritage Foundation’s plan like ever gotcha-playin liberal on this site claims. Then what exactly are the liberals new ideas since 1980s.

Actually getting off their ass and doing it. The Republicans had a long time and many chances to pass universal health reform– in fact, the Bush administration had almost unlimited reach to do whatever it wanted on any number of issues, and made no effort on the health coverage issue. In short, Republicans are useless human beings, and voting for them only results in destructive results. There were many Republicans that criticized the health care reform, but obviously, given the chance, they did nothing about the issue, so their opinions were of no value. Why these wastes of humanity are considered fit to have their opinons considered of any validity (these were dewfenders of the Bush administration, after all), much less fit to govern is beyond me.

If their ideas about universal health care were any good, they would have passed them. Instead, only the political faction of any worth did any work in that regard.

It’s not so much that the Republicans and conservatives are “the party of Bush.” It’s that they are “the party of Bush supporters,” and thus the party of moral and intellectual failures.

This article articulates so many of the feelings that I have so well. So often I find myself wondering, where do I go to participate in our political society to at least try and influence the direction of the party or at least become active with a group of people who see similar issues. I’ve yet to find that group.

Forgive me if someone else has said this already, but this is why I prefer “localist” or “traditionalist” instead of “conservative.” If I call myself a “traditionalist” that gives people some idea of what I mean, but it doesn’t shut down conversation, doesn’t evoke too many nasty stereotypes, and invites further discussion. Of course, in calling myself a “traditionalist” I essentially mean a C.S. Lewis/T.S. Eliot (ironic juxtaposition given their strained relationship) conservative, but it’s easier to just say “traditionalist.”

Why is everything being labeled conservative or liberal? I believe that realistically no one can be all conservative or liberal. What happened to “middle of the road” when it comes to political views? I still consider myself to be middle of the road, not conservative or liberal because not all issues fit on one side or the other.

I find it interesting the the Republicans (now conservatives) that I know, will always vote Republican no matter what. Republicans are against gay marriage today, but might be for it tomorrow, and these people who vote Republican will still vote Republican. It’s kind of like the bandwagon approach.

We need to get away from branding everyone as a liberal or conservative because of what they believe. I get sick and tired of people who assume that because I believe in “A, B, and C”, then I probably oppose “Z, Y and Z”. That isn’t necessarily true, because not everything is black and white. A conservative issue might have two good points and one bad point, while a liberal issue might have three bad points but one REALLY good point.

The idea of everything being on opposite spectrums is not working. If the politicians really want things to work for everyone (which I don’t think they do), then they need to stop blaming each other meet in the middle between both views. I wonder how many “conservative” thinkers are really conservative or if it is just a bandwagon attitude. I am Catholic, and ironically, I know a lot of Catholics who take a more Liberal view than Conservative. I think a lot of it is because while the Conservatives emphasize pro-life, their agenda is not pro-life because it won’t make the problems go away, just create more problems. The Catholic Church teaches that pro-life is more than just anti-abortion. It is how life is treated from conception to natural death. It doesn’t matter if it is an infant, 15-year old, 45-year old, or 99-year old; they should all be treated with care and respect. And it means not abandoning them. While I don’t believe in giving handouts, I do believe that assistance should be available, i.e. welfare, unemployment. I believe that there needs to be a limit, so that people will need to take responsibility. But, taking all programs away will not automatically make people get up and go get a job. Some of these people who have been unemployed probably need to be re-trained in a field, or trained/certified in a new field to get back to work.